Month: February 2016

We learned in our first installment the importance of Complaining. There were even tips on how to complain, if you do not have much experience doing it and/or don’t come by it naturally. Then we learned how important Procrastination was in making 2016 your Worst Year Ever. We even discoveredthe keys to disguising procrastination and laziness as patience.

Now it’s time to get real. And by real, I mean honest. There’s a reason why you are not successful at relationships or at work or basically any area of your life, right? It’s someone else’s fault. It’s ALWAYS someone else’s fault.

“Blame” is a really cool word. It can be either a verb or a noun! Dictionaries will tell us that as a verb, Blame means “to hold responsible; or, “to find fault with” someone or something else. As a noun, Blame is “an act of attributing fault.” Can you see where we’re going with this? Are you as excited as I am?

We are all tempted at times to be envious of what other people have but to have the Worst Year Ever, we want to really kick that up a notch. It is very important for us to realize that if we don’t have the same level of success as someone else, it’s somehow actually their fault, or society’s, or our parents, or something.

Don’t get me wrong. There are apparently people out there in the world who want to have healthy mature relationships and make decisions that will drive their personal and professional success. Those people might possibly kinda sorta take ownership for their own actions. But that’s obviously not where we’re headed if we want to make this year our Worst Year Ever!

And, could we ask for a better role model for not taking ownership for our actions than the great Han Solo? The infamous intergalactic smuggler was known for saying “Hey, it’s not my fault!” with a slight sympathetic whine to his voice, whenever anything went wrong with his ship, the Millennium Falcon. In fact, he says this phrase again when he reprised his role in the most recent installment Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Han Solo makes it look easy, but this kind of thinking requires a great deal of mental agility. Whether you want to Blame it on the Rain, Blame it on the Night, or Blame it on the Boogie, not taking responsibility for your own actions is one key component in having a horrible year. Why? Because when you limp lifeless and hopeless into 2017, you will want the trainwreck that was 2016 to not have been your fault at all. If you can manage to NOT take responsibility for any of your own actions, then you don’t have to worry about making any CHANGES to your behaviors. This is how bad actions become bad habits…and THAT is how you can use Blaming to make 2016 your Worst Year Ever! [I just dropped the mic after making that last very salient point… Trust me. It was really dramatic.]

There is literally nowhere that Blaming is more destructive than in relationships. If you want to drive away the good people in your life, you owe it to yourself to learn how to place blame squarely where it belongs. Mainly on anything or anyone that is not you.

In playing the blame game in relationships, sometimes we might need to remember that conversations and such happened a little (or a lot) differently than they actually happened in reality. Nothing escalates an argument like accusing the other person of doing or saying something they actually never did or said. If you don’t have much experience in Blaming others, then that’s no problem at all. You can practice! Follow this easy exercise. Stand in front of a mirror. Arrange your face in a condescending scowl. (If you need help in determining just what a ‘condescending scowl’ is, please reference any photograph of presidential hopeful Donald Trump.) Then repeat phrases such as “Oh, yeah?! Well, remember the time YOU forgot to start the dishwasher?!” You know, things like that. And, by all means, be creative. Make stuff up!

Even though no one ever really wins the blame game,practicing the art of blaming leads to so much trouble and hard feelings, that it is definitely worth the effort. Which leads nicely into the 4th thing you should do to have the Worst Year Ever!

Next time, we will explore the oft misunderstood and underestimated art behind Holding Grudges!!

Jefferson Holbrook, DSC, received a Doctor of Science in Communications from Tudor College of Earlscroft University and has published numerous essays, articles, poems, short stories and blogs. He is also the author of two collections of poetry. He lives with his family in the southeastern United States.